Duplicate Detective: Cleaner for PC and Mac

Software Reviews and Criticism

• By markTheDeveloperAndITExpert

  I’ve used three different deduplicators and this is my favorite!

  I have 3 different deduplicators and this is my favorite.. Is it perfect, No, the most irritating issue is that if it experiences errors during the deleting process, you have to run it all again, it doesn’t let you go back and maybe change permissions and try to delete again… Major pain!! I like the fact that it will let you make hard links instead of deleting, which is fine UNLESS you are on an APFS!!!! CAUTION!!!! Read up on APFS and hardlinks. The other thing is that if you are wanting to delete files from one specific directory that are named the same but on different devices, it only shows you the directory name so you either have to change the directory name before you run the deduplication process or try it and check all the selected to make sure those selected to be deleted are in the correct directory or it would be MUCH better if it would show you the full path of the directories in the selection options instead of just the directory! That’s it, I’m not sure if it is any faster than the others but I like using it the best!

  
  
• By Tazman_OH

  Just OK

  I have so many pictures all over my hard drive and external hard drive. I wanted an app that would find the duplicates. Yes, it found duplicates, but not all. Once it scanned, which it took forever by the way, it would come up with some duplicates. I could take the file name that it found and put it into my Finder window and found a ton more. Too time consuming to delete them like that. It will also tell me that there is one in my Photo app and when I go to search for it, it’s gone. Or it will tell me there is one in the Photo app and one in a file folder. So I thought I’d delete the one that was showing in the folder, saving the one in the Photo app. Well it ended up deleting them both. I did NOT have them both checked, but it still deleted them both. :( Anyway … all that aside, just make sure when you hit delete that you aren’t deleting something you want to keep. :( Going to look for another app ….

  
  
• By zezee3

  EXCELLENT SEAERCH ENGINE

  I always drop my Windows HD onto it whenever I want to find all duplicaates, and boy does it do an excellent job. When I first started, it took forever and ever, it seemed, but the little emessages pop up and say be patient we are not finished yet, we will tell you when we are done. and yes it does. This app has freed up so much space on. my computer. Now when I run it, it maybe finds a ½ a dozen duplicates all the time. Once you use it to the full extent to find all your duplicares, it will make sure your computer has no more in it when you run it the net time. I give this app a 5 star because it has really freed up my computer and helped me find all the duplicaates inon my HD. I love it. use it regularly and would recommend it to anybody using a wonderful Windows.

  
  
• By Cleanerup

  Too many steps!!

  I have used Duplicate Detective for the last several years but it is not intuitive. I have to keep two windows open (instructions & files) even though I have used it for so long! The steps are not clear or intuitive and require me to follow the instructions step by step every time I use it. (After it identifies the duplicates there remain a number of steps one has to follow to delete the duplicates even though that is the one and only thing you are running the scan for. You are required to go back through each step, not just push a single button.) The time it takes to identify the files, go through the identification process and then to do a clean-up process isn’t excessively long, just tedious. Why couldn’t they simplify the works with a couple buttons that automate the process! .

  
  
• By DSreb

  I love it for finding duplicates

  I decided to devote some dedicated time to cleaning up my disk, and Duplicate Detective was invaluable. It scanned 600GB of files in around a minute and made deleting files much, much easier. In a recent update (I think) a prompt was added to indicate that you should check the files you want to delete (not the ones you want to keep). That was very helpful. I gave this a 4/5 instead of a 5 because I found it tedious to use with the thousands of duplicates I had. I had to review each file separately. What I would really like is if there were options to organize the file list more compactly (more like a file manager) displaying as many duplicates as will fit on the screen and being able to tick off duplicates without having to navigate down the list one at a time. It would also be nice to be able to organize the file list so that (for instance), Column #1 would be a list of all files in a particular directory (or directory sub tree) for which there were duplicates, and then to the right, and then one column for each directory in which a duplicate was found. Hard to explain in a review, but if developers are interested in clarifying this I'm happy to respond. Overall, I would highly recommend this for folks who are trying to recover disk space (or get stuff to fit in a full Dropbox or Google Drive). Well done.

  
  

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